Sara’s Fave Photos

This cactus macro lives at the Volunteer Park Conservatory, in the succulent area. All cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti, you know. This one is about as wide across as my hand on top. I’ve been to the American Southwest and you develop an appreciation for how beautiful they can be.

Visit Macro Monday, Mellow Yellow Monday, and a new meme, Cactus Monday, for more interesting photos. If you’ve arrived here from another link, you can access the latest blog posts by clicking on Sara’s Fave Photos, above. But before you leave, try visiting a new tag or category here. “Close up” tag, perhaps?

These are from my Peace rosebush a few weeks ago. There are still blooms out there, but not in the full heady flush you get in July. Enjoy their vision of perfection.

Visit Shadow Shot Sunday for more interesting shadows, Today’s Flowers for more lovely blooms, Macro Monday for more wonderful close ups and Mellow Yellow Monday for more photos with a splash of yellow. If you’ve arrived via the permalink, you can find the latest posts at Sara’s Fave Photos. Don’t be shy; click it and see what’s new!

A recent visit to Seattle’s Pike Place Market flower vendors delighted and impressed, as always. What a place. Do you know that the flower vendors can only sell the flowers they have grown themselves?

Here’s a dahlia bouquet with the original touch of being ringed with marigolds. Or maybe they are coreopsis. Don’t you want it on your kitchen table, whatever they are called?

Visit Macro Monday, Mellow Yellow Monday, Color Carnival and Ruby Tuesday after poking around here. If you’ve arrived via the permalink, Sara’s Fave Photos has the regular blog.

This year the seed-started cosmos plants have done very well. The cool wet spring helped them to get established, especially since the slugs don’t seem to like them. Some of the plants had a real problem, like the petunias, but the cosmos all stood undevoured. Now they are beginning to take off. Don’t forget that they are good in bouquets, too!

Visit Macro Monday for more wonderful close ups of all kinds. Color Carnival has more bright colors. Mellow Yellow Monday thinks everything is better with a splash of yellow. Isn’t it? The Shadow is kind of neat, too. And this one is SOOC, or straight out of the camera.

Try a new link or category while you are here. Why not? The latest post is always at Sara’s Fave Photos.

Here’s a beauty of an orchid photographed at the Volunteer Park Conservatory in Seattle. Wonderful place. I don’t know the name of the yellow ones in back, but the front ones are Phalaenopsis, which I think means Looks Like a Butterfly. Which is does.

Visit Mellow Yellow Monday for more splashes of cheerful yellow and Macro Monday for more fabulous closeups.

While you’re here, try a new tag or category. And return to the latest post  by clicking on Sara’s Fave Photos, above.

Feverfew is one of those herbs that sometimes appear as a weed, brought by the birds. I am lucky I recognized it and put the small plant where it would thrive. Sometimes volunteer plants are a gift, no? Now it is covered with masses of small white flowers, great in bouquets, that even did fine in our recent heatwave. It’s asking a lot of a garden to go from cool and 60s to a couple of days of sunny and mid 90s. But all is well.

Visit Macro Monday and Mellow Yellow Monday for more of the same. Try browsing here and there first, and you can always get back to the main blog by clicking on Sara’s Fave Photos.

Friends with a house on little-but-cute Lake Burien south of Seattle invited us to a 4th of July party last night and there were fireworks set off from a barge. I actually brought my tripod and even read in my camera book about fireworks, but when it came down to it, I really don’t like tripods (they need to invent an easy clip-on and quick-remove thing to attach your camera and also be quick to set up, light and cheap!) so I wound up taking the shots handheld, but I’ve learned to adapt. First, I guessed and set the time to a full second, and then I braced my elbows on the arms of the folding chair. Not too bad, is it?

Visit Mellow Yellow Monday for more photos with gold or yellow in them. And after browsing around here, you can return to the full blog by clicking on Sara’s Fave Photos here or above.

This yellow King’s Ransom beauty is fragrant, too.  Most of the roses in my new rosebed had to be pruned off due to the rain (they got all brown and ugly) but this one made it to perfection for us. But more are in bud, so if the weather dries out a bit we’ll have some more soon.

Visit Macro Monday and Mellow Yellow Monday after browsing around here. To return to the latest post, click on Sara’s Fave Photos above.

Here’s another perfect rose, bathed in raindrops. This is the Peace rose, always a fave of me and so many others. I love its creamy yellow petals, edged with the palest, sweetest pink, and its healthy, bright green leaves. Like all my roses, it is fragrant. Why else have roses?

Visit Macro Monday and Mellow Yellow Monday for two great memes of close ups and cheerful yellow photos, and SOOC for more straight-out-of-the-camera shots.

You can search this blog for “rain,” perhaps, and find other roses with water droplets on them if you like. Or how about a tag like “reflections”? Click on Sara’s Fave Photos above to return to the full blog.

I took a walk in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle last week.

This old-fashioned rose with a single row of petals sometimes is prettier than the huge ruffled kind. Below that is ceanothus (see-an-OH-thus), or Wild Lilac in California, or California Lilac up here in Seattle. It also has a sweet scent and can become quite a big shrubby plant, covered in blue in the spring. When I lived in Northern California, it was common and wild, and bloomed with yellow broom on the rolling hills. Pretty nice!

Visit Macro Monday, Mellow Yellow Monday and Blue Monday after wandering about here.

One of the very best things about the Pike Place Market flower vendors is their complete disregard for typical florist combinations. No one told them that bouquets are not supposed to be made with regular old garden flowers. Since they must sell only what they grow, the combinations that result are not seen anywhere else. Below is a bouquet with a Shirley poppy (I think), lupine or bluebonnet in the back, and Dutch iris.

Visit Macro Monday, Blue Monday, Color Carnival and Mellow Yellow Monday for more of the same idea. And do check out a new tag or category on each visit here, just for fun. Return to the full blog by clicking Sara’s Fave Photos in the header.

This scotch broom (I think!) was on the road to Port Townsend via Tacoma recently. It was pretty wonderful, even if it’s not a native plant.

Visit Mellow Yellow Monday and Scenic Sunday after browsing around here. Click on Sara’s Fave Photos to return to the latest post.

Some bouquets of fresh yellow tulips in cellophane photographed at Pike Place Market a week or so ago for your viewing pleasure. Notice the tiny water droplets on the cellophane wrapper? I love that.

Visit Mellow Yellow Monday, Color Carnival and Macro Monday after browsing around here. Try clicking one of the tags to the lower left. You can return to the latest post always by clicking on Sara’s Fave Photos above.

This top photo taken at the Pike Place Market flower vendors combined a display of two of my top fave flowers: tulips and lilacs. I am so happy that I planted some lilacs in our front yard and at least I had one bloom to smell as much as I wanted. Next year I’ll have more. But until they get going, I’m always happy to see them for sale, perfuming the air for all who pass by.

The photo under that one is buds of Dutch Iris. Sometimes I love the possibilities of the bud even more than I love the flower blooming.

Visit Mellow Yellow Monday, Color Carnival and Macro Monday. For Blue Monday, there are some blue iris buds peeking through in the bottom photo. Hope that qualifies!

You can always return to the most current post by clicking on Sara’s Fave Photos above. Have fun browsing around.

My mom used to grow a big hedge of these croton plants in Southern Florida. I’ve tried to grow them as houseplants, without too much success. But this healthy specimen in the Volunteer Park Conservatory was just waiting to show off for the camera. Almost looks like a flower, doesn’t it?

Visit Macro Monday, Color Carnival and Mellow Yellow Monday after browsing around here. Click on a new tag or category! And you can always find the latest post by clicking on Sara’s Fave Photos above.